Spike Lee's 'Miracle' fails to deliver on promising tale

by
Mike Scott, Movie writer, The Times-Picayune

Friday September 26, 2008, 4:30 AM

Omar Benson Miller, left and Matteo Sciabordi in Spike Lee's 'Miracle at St. Anna.'

If for no other reason, you've got to admire Spike Lee's "Miracle at St. Anna" for its sheer scope.

A World War II drama focusing on four black GIs caught behind enemy lines in Nazi-occupied Italy, it's a big story, on a big stage -- and, specifically regarding the involvement of black soldiers in the war effort, one that's largely been ignored on the big screen.

In that respect, "Miracle at St. Anna" is a story with promise, but in the hands of Lee -- who has proven he's capable of more -- it ends up disappointing.

Here, he succumbs to what is among the greatest sins for a director of his talent: ordinariness. Almost everything about the film feels obvious, from battle scenes that, while taut, lack originality, to the consistently tin-ear dialogue.

And when a director is asking an audience to sit through a movie that clocks in at 2 hours and 40 minutes, "obvious" isn't something he can afford.

It's a shame because the story is an intriguing one, starting with a New York murder mystery rooted in the time an aging veteran spent hunkered down with his military unit in a village deep in Nazi territory.

While waiting for an extraction team, the four black soldiers -- along with an injured (and vaguely mystical) Italian boy they've taken under their wings -- are hidden by a few villagers. But when the Nazis, unaware of the soldiers' presence, march into town, things get hairy.

And, as the title suggests, a miracle ensues.

What is undebatable is that the story is historically significant on multiple levels. Not only does it explore World War II from the view of four black Americans -- conflicted by the knowledge that they're putting their lives on the line for freedom on behalf of a country that, in 1944, was still restricting their own -- but it also shines a light on the Nazis' real-life massacre of the men, women and children of the Italian village of Sant'Anna di Stazzema.

Unfortunately the sprawling story by writer James McBride, on whose novel the film was based and who wrote the screenplay, contains a number of needless scenes as well as several characters -- and entire subplots -- that do nothing to advance the story.

So we end up getting flashbacks within flashbacks. We get scenes that go to extra lengths to tell us things we already know. (Yes, Nazis are evil; having one bayonet a baby at her dead mother's breast is unnecessary.) We get a needless romantic rivalry. And we get one of the most gratuitous topless scenes since the campus-set romp "College" came and went last month.

That last one doubles as an example of Lee's misjudging the tone of his film, which is oddly -- and inexplicably -- comic at its outset.

If there are two things Lee has always been, they are daring and provocative. He stays true to that here, bravely treading new territory to tackle a historical epic with important social themes.

If only he would have remembered the importance of good storytelling along the way.